Wednesday, December 03, 2014

24

And so, the Christmas countdown begins. I already feel like I usually feel with three days to go and it's only the first week in December, it may be due to the Advent Calendar madness we embarked on.

Usually we've bought The Boy an advent calendar off the shelf, last year a Star Wars Lego one to avoid the 7am chocolate tantrums, but all the bits were a very small and didn't add up to much in the end. So this year we had the brainwave of buying a full size set (same price as a calendar) and splitting it into 24 elements; this is very much the Husband's department and involved a great deal of faffing and MEASURING and making special instruction cards, which is almost his favourite thing to do, so he was happy.

This will mean nothing to most people. Others will know it's a LEGO 70503 Ninjago Golden Dragon set, with Golden Ninja; who used to be the green ninja and before that a delinquent candy stealer called Lloyd Garmadon. he has now reached his full potential, but he did have a difficult childhood.

I did the sewing, which is my third favourite thing to do but there was no way a knitted calendar was going to happen in the time available (I'll leave that to the Yarn Harlot).

I made it pretty much out of things already in my stash (for a mainly-knitter I have a pretty good stash of sew-ey stuff, it turns out) but went out and bought glitter fabric paint for the numbers because embroidering up to 24 is not so much my thing.

Biscuit tin storage. I need more tins though.

A giant rectangle of blue fleece and 24 jersey pockets later I had the basics down (or the boring bit as I christened it) so I got to do the fun bit with the felt, braid, beads and hot glue gun, because I am the sheriff of stationery village.

Oh, I do miss the Mighty Boosh

I made snowmen, parcels and trees (with re-purposed beads for baubles):

Craft!

And then stuck them all over the giant blue rectangle. Here is a photo taken of it hanging off the drinks cabinet (drinks cabinet!) at a crazy angle.I honestly hadn't been at the drinks inside the cabinet at this stage, but may have been over-caffeinated:

Ooo, gin!

Then we stuffed each pocket with 1/24 of the LEGO set and instructions, and may possibly put some chocolate coins in the weekends but I'm not sure yet. He'll get the Golden Ninja on Christmas Eve.